Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Revolutionaries, Scholars, Scoundrels, and Nihilists Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Devils (1871-72; translation by Michael R. Katz 1992) depicts the end of the absurd and moving 20+ year platonic romance between Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina in the context of the possession of their provincial town by foreign radical ideas and homegrown atheist nihilists. The novel explores how dangerous ideas and words and writing can be (they can possess people); how revolutionary groups form and recruit and bind (possess) members and manipulate (possess) the masses into violent action; how fickle, foolish, mean, and malleable is public opinion; how defensive and inferiority complex ridden Russia was (especially vis-à-vis European culture); and how multiply motived, contradictory, and complex the human heart and mind are. It asserts the need for common human decency as a balm for if not a protection from abuse and exploitation. And for some kind of spiritual faith and moral purpose: “the last word is universal forgiveness.” The novel powerfully reminds one that all too often charismatic and intelligent people who begin utopian revolutions are ultimately in it for power, and that, as one character muses at one point, “Convictions and human feeling—it seems they’re two different things,” with the latter superior to the former, despite the fact that politically driven people often lose sight of that. Dostoevsky anticipates and describes Stalin and Hitler. The novel has many great points. Like the following: --Fascinating characters (often morbidly so), like Stepan Trofimovich, the delusional, self-centered, spoiled, ineffectual scholar, and his amoral, manipulative, and destructive son Pyotr; Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, the sane nihilistic rake, and his wealthy domineering mother Varvara Petrovna; and the earnest, ex-revolutionary student Ivan Pavlovich Shatov and his desperately self-willed friend Kirillov. --Great scenes, like Stepan learning that he’s supposed to marry a young former student of his; Pyotr behaving so innocently impudent and crafty in his first appearance; some feckless young people visiting a revered arbitrary hermit-priest; Pyotr revealing why he’s so invested in Nikolai; Nikolai confessing to a retired bishop; the Group of Five meeting for the first time; a literary fete going off the rails; the convict Fedka asserting his independence; and Stepan walking on the road in cavalry boots. . . --Keen and cynical wisdom about human nature vis-à-vis political schemers and dupes; revolutionaries and scoundrels; pseudo intellectuals and revered writers; aristocrats and peasants; atheists and Christians; Russia and Russians; public opinion and gossip. Just when it’s starting to feel sour and bleak, some fundamental love and belief almost redeems it (“Love is the crown of being”). --An interesting narrator: he’s trying to make sense of the events of the novel for which he was often a passive eye-witness, recounting them about three months after they occurred and a “Commission of Inquiry” began investigating what happened. He’s given to irony (e.g., “An enormous subversive organization of thirteen members”), though he tries to honestly reveal both his “reliable sources” and the limits of his “own best surmises” about events. Dostoevsky also, of course, writes great descriptions of people, like “In appearance Shatov closely resembled his convictions. He was clumsy, fair-haired, disheveled, short, broad-shouldered, thick-lipped, with very heavy, overhanging pale blond eyebrows, a furrowed brow, and an unfriendly, stubbornly downcast gaze that seemed ashamed of something.” He also writes many great lines on: --Love: “Even a louse can fall in love.” --Human nature: “The horror and vague feeling of personal danger, added to the thrilling effect of a night fire, produce in the spectator (not, of course, in those whose houses have gone up in flames) a certain shock to the system and as it were a challenge to the destructive instincts which, alas, lie buried within each and every soul, even that of the meekest and most domestic civil servant…” --America: “One has to be born in America, or at least live among them for many years, to become their equal.” --Revolutionaries: “Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are all so incredibly miserly and acquisitive and proprietarial?” --Religion: “The more impoverished an entire people is, the more stubbornly it dreams of reward in paradise.” Audiobook reader George Guidall excels at voicing the characters (especially Pyotr, Stepan, the convict Fedka, and Captain Lebyadkin), but it’s difficult to understand his French when Stepan speaks it (which he often does). Many of the characters’ three names are exotic enough and similar-sounding enough to cause confusion, as with Mavriky Nikolaevich and Nikolai Vsevolodovich. The narrator refers to Nikolai as Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Nikolai, Nikolai Stavrogin, or Stavrogin. All this is to say that it might be easier to read the physical novel than to listen to the audiobook. The book took me a LONG time to finish, and although the fault was mine because a trip interrupted my reading for three weeks, there are too many scenes with too much talking, and dealing with the book had already begun to feel like a not altogether pleasant chore even before that hiatus, and upon finishing it I felt freed from a kind of psychological bondage. If you are a fan of Dostoesvsky, this book would surely be worth your while, but if you are new to him, I’d recommend starting with Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. View all my reviews
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